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Veteran fashion journalist Lauren Sherman has joined Puck, where she will write a fashion industry newsletter, starting April 10. Sherman’s Line Sheet will initially be released once a week (on Mondays), but will eventually increase to twice a week (adding Thursdays).
Sherman joins Puck after a long stint at the Business of Fashion, who left last December. He first began discussions with Puck editor-in-chief and co-founder Jon Kelly about eight months ago. Sherman is also writing a Victoria’s Secret book with Chantal Fernandez, due out early next year (Henry Holt & Company). His Puck newsletter will include a big story plus additional shorter summaries and links to essential industry reading.
“If you look at the lists of the richest people in the world, from [Inditex owner Amancio Ortega] to the Arnaults [LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton] to the Pinaults [Kering]tons of them are fashion moguls and very little has been written about these people,” Sherman said.
Indeed, the $1.5 trillion global fashion market, with its outsized personalities and eye-popping valuations, is a natural extension for Puck, Kelly said.
“I always imagined it [fashion] that would have been an area of growth for Puck,” Kelly told WWD. “We’ve seen, post-COVID[-19] era, the rise and fall of some of the biggest brands in the industry. With all of our areas of coverage, we want to focus on the internal strategies and anxieties and turmoil of the people that propel the industry forward and not be bound by any other obligations.
Puck’s content is driven by individual journalists – Matt Belloni (Hollywood), William D. Cohan (Wall Street), Julia Ioffe (Washington), Dylan Byers (Media) – whose dispatches are distributed to subscribers via “private email as Kelly said. The writers receive a base salary and get an ownership stake in the media startup, launching in 2021. They also receive bonus compensation tied to the number of email subscribers they bring in. For example, for every 1,000 additional subscribers over a certain threshold, they get $10,000.
Puck’s editorial mantra is “the story behind the story” of “generationally talented” reporters who are “domain experts,” Kelly said.
Sherman said she was drawn to Puck because of his hard-hitting writing and start-up ethic. “I want to work in places that offer value to the reader and are worth the reader’s time and money. And I’ve always loved working in early stage startups.
Prior to her tenure at Business of Fashion, Sherman worked at Fashionista and Lucky. She has also written about fashion for a number of historic publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter.
Sherman will cover the collections, albeit not in a traditional way. The intention is to explore the behind-the-scenes machinations of an industry that has tentacles into a myriad of thorny issues of the moment including sustainability, climate impact, and issues of class and race. Reflecting on the stories Line Sheet subscribers might find in his newsletter, Sherman mentioned what he described as Tiffany’s rousing collaboration with Nike and the Vogue Runway app, which suffered technical difficulties.
“I love building things and from the day Puck was launched, I’ve really admired it. I thought, oh, I could do this for fashion. I’m the right person for this,” she said.
The media industry has weathered the demise and decline of several legacy brands, while digital distribution platforms have given birth to a new generation of newsletter stars catering to niche audiences. A basic subscription to Puck costs $100 a year. There are also podcasts and an Inner Circle membership tier (for $250 a year) that includes unrecorded conference calls with Puck’s writers.
Puck recipients are the people Puck authors write about; captains of industry and C-suite regulars. And the writing strives not so much for the fly-on-the-wall as for the seat at the boardroom table. One sheet boasts that “about 25 percent of Puck’s subscriber base are high-level or government officials.”
Kelly declined to offer details of Puck’s finances, though he admitted that “entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.” She defined Puck’s revenue pie as “aggressively subscription-driven with an ad-supported growing business.” A newsletter about the fashion industry, which spends more than $500 billion a year on advertising, could unlock additional advertising dollars. Despite severe economic headwinds affecting the industry, Kelly is “bullish” about the future of media.
“I think we’re all looking for new business models that make media more sustainable and profitable,” Kelly added.
